Metaverse in the Indian Education Sector

Vinod Kakumanu
April 3, 2023, 12:59 p.m.

Meta (formerly Facebook) has announced its plan to expand partnership with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), India’s largest school board. This partnership includes training in augmented reality (AR) to millions of students and about a million teachers over the coming three years. As part of the extension of the second phase of this partnership, Meta will also provide a curriculum on digital safety and online well-being.

The metaverse is a collection of tools and environments that allow users to explore virtual 3D spaces to socialize, learn, collaborate and play. Education experts say that the metaverse has the power to enable students learn through enhanced interaction and immersive learning experiences, and can offer hands-on learning even beyond the classrooms. This could be used for learning of complex concepts like surgery or history or language learning, through immersive virtual experiences like simulations and field trips.

Many educational institutions are exploring the possibilities, and putting in place their own strategies for utilizing these technologies in their own learning systems. For example, Global University Systems (GUS) – an international network of higher education institutions – along with its partner institutions, aim to have their own Meta presence through virtual campuses, and setting up immersive classrooms and labs.

While the potential is immense in using metaverse technologies to transform the Indian education sector, experts also think that to enable this shift, teachers have to be really well-equipped to facilitate the change. The government and industry will have to jointly build professional development courses, training teachers on how to use the metaverse, and to incorporate it into classroom teaching. Even though the technology is available and ready, for the education sector to significantly adopt metaverse would take around 5 to 8 years, according to experts. Main challenges would be around attitude and mind-set, regulatory compliance, and technical ability for content generation.